I have a ATI/AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics on a HP Pavilion g7 (hp pavilion g7-1246ef). This computer came with a pre-installed Windows 7 64 bit OS. For some reason I had to use the Windows 7 32-bit OS and there are no 32-bit drivers for my computer (it looks like; they should be here).

I was able to install drivers, Aero works and so on, but the fans are loud, so that I would like to try and find some driver that will fix this...

Were did you get the graphic driver from? Considering you're using a laptop with switchable graphics, you need specific drivers for both cards. What's the hardware ID for both?
– and31415Aug 5 '14 at 9:25

@and31415 - I have found the Intel HD 3000 on an Intel site I guess, that was pretty forward. I found different packages for AMD/ATI on the Catalyst website, but I had problems with that, as specifed in this question (other package was tested and discussed there), but in the end I have installed the driver (details in this answer).
– user162573Aug 5 '14 at 9:40

The AMD card ID is PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6760&SUBSYS_1672103C&REV_00, which corresponds to Radeon (TM) HD 6470M. Despite the fact no 32-bit driver seem to be available, the 64-bit package actually contains both. Make sure to uninstall the current driver, restart, and then install the one provided by HP. As for the Intel card, the 32-bit package for Windows 8 is compatible with Windows 7 as well.
– and31415Aug 5 '14 at 11:02

3 Answers
3

After trying different ways to install the drivers my opinion is that in order to see the hardware the system needs some kind of software/drivers. Removing all drivers completely makes the hardware inaccessible. In most cases Windows will try to install some minimal generic drivers as soon as it detects their absence. In some cases removing the drivers will make the display unusable (completely black) after reboot (it happened to me twice after removing the Intel drivers from HP; I had to boot in safe mode in order to use the display and install a driver; another solution was to use a rescue disk and from there to go back to a system restore point.)

So, the answer to the question is probably that without some drivers (at least the generic ones that come with the OS installation) there is no access to the hardware.

Also, accessing information on the hardware - its "specifications" - depends on the driver up to some point: using a driver intended for a Radeon (TM) HD 7400M GPU while I had Radeon (TM) HD 6470M displayed the wrong info that my GPU was 7400M. But even so (or, I imagine, with some generic driver) it was possible to see the hardware ID, which led to identifying the hardware (see images in the question and the comments made by and31415).

I can confirm that the description entirely depends on the information stored on the .inf file, which can be misleading/generic at times. The most important bit is the hardware ID, though. As for the display troubles, Windows should revert a basic Standard VGA Graphics Adapter driver (which is used while in Safe Mode, too) upon uninstalling the required drivers, but for some reason that didn't happen. Good to know, at least.
– and31415Aug 10 '14 at 16:43

Also note that you should just use the latest driver HP provides. You should then be able to adjust fan speed in the control center.

Try right-clicking the ATI icon in your system tray and pick Hardware.

Select Overclocking Settings and open the Fan tab.

There should be an option to enable manual fan control; just keep in mind that wrong settings might make your system unstable or might even break it (should usually be prevented by basic hardware/BIOS safeguards).

Are you sure that dxdiag displays the full info before any drivers are installed? even with all installed as in the last image dxdiag only sees the intel card. now i have the intel driver on and cannot test if intel card is seen before the driver is there. the same for GPU-Z: i looked up this program before the AMD driver being installed and no proper info was provided. after installing the driver, GPU-Z can see it as it should... As stated in the question, there are no win7/32-bit drivers for my computer from the HP websites.
– user162573Aug 5 '14 at 9:51

Also, no proper way of installing an AMD/ATI interface+tray icon feature like I was able to install for Intel. More details on what happens in this question and my answer thereunder. - Because of these problems I am asking this question here.
– user162573Aug 5 '14 at 9:52

as presented in the answer linked in my previous comment: I was able to install the AMD driver only by updating in Device Manager and then searching a bunch of folders with all sort of packages (trying to run exe of those packages would only un-pack them in C:/AMD; directing the updater there, a driver is installed); then a proper name of the device appears now when checking in Device manager or with the tools you mentioned (which didn't happen before installing the driver in this way). But even so, there is no ATI/AMD GUI with tray icon etc and therefore no advanced options like for fac etc
– user162573Aug 5 '14 at 10:25